10 Advantages and Disadvantages of Cloning

Cloning used to be something that was only in science fiction novels and films, but in today’s modern world, it is here and it is one of the most controversial topics among the science and medical communities. Plants and animals have already been successfully cloned, but the next step is making many people uncomfortable, human cloning. The moral and ethical conflicts are just pouring out of human cloning talk, but should we really be so hesitant? Let’s take a good look at all of the good and bad that could possible come from cloning humans.

Advantages of Cloning

1. Solve Fertility Problems
Many couples cannot conceive a child naturally, this includes people with fertility problems as well as same sex couples that want to have a biological child. These couples would be able to use their own genes to create a child.

2. Organ and Tissue Harvesting
There are thousands of people on a list for an organ donations and many die during the wait each year. With cloning, you would be able to clone your vital organs in order to ensure that you always have a healthy back up just in case.

3. Filling A Void
Losing a child can shatter a couple, but with cloning, it would be possible to bring that child back. Cloning could be used to bring back loved ones who have died, as well as influential and historically relevant people in order to gain insight on the world.

4. Designer Babies
Cloning would allow future parents to theoretically choose the traits of their baby. The genes of these traits could be inserted into the embryo to ensure that they have them.

Disadvantages of Cloning

1. A Further Divide
In today’s world there is already quite a bit of divide among the people. Whether it be what race you, what language you speak, or how much money you make, prejudice and discrimination exists. If cloned humans where introduced into the world then they would feel as if they are not as much “human” as people that are not cloned.

2. Risk of Mutations
When you are dealing with genes, there is always a risk that mutation could occur. This could result in deaths and extreme abnormalities in the cloned person. With a human life in the mix, this is not a risk to be taken lightly.

3. Development Of New Diseases
By bringing in an entirely new group of people, that we have no experience or research on, we could be introducing many things into the human race. Among these are new diseases that we have no treatments for, and could possibly even be deadly.

4. Ethical Issues
Many people believe that the practice of cloning is wrong because it is playing God. Man should not duplicate unique individuals just for the purpose of study or medical advancements.

5. Clone Rights?
If there where exact, genetic duplicates of people running around, would they receive the same rights and fall underneath the same laws as their human counterparts? There are many different legal and civil problems that would arise from the use of cloning.

6. Insufficient Research
As of now, the research and testing that is necessary before embarking on something so insane as cloning humans, does not exist. It will be a very large obstacle to begin this type of testing, mainly because of the problems that already exist with animal cloning.

Important Facts About Cloning

A clone has no mother and no father, biologically speaking.

They are a product of asexual reproduction.

Great Britain is the only country in the world that has cloning legal for therapeutic reasons.